


Drowning In Ice; It Happens

by Zayrastriel



Series: The Drowning 'verse [6]
Category: Actor RPF
Genre: Gen, Zombie Apocalypse, no actual on-screen so to speak famous people sorry and the main character is actually original
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-05
Updated: 2012-09-05
Packaged: 2017-11-13 14:54:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/504704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zayrastriel/pseuds/Zayrastriel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ayesha is still alive and safe, in a research base in Antarctica watching helplessly as the world explodes.  She lost her parents and three sisters thirteen years ago in Kabul, so she’s been mourning long enough to live with it.  <br/>That doesn’t mean it’s easy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drowning In Ice; It Happens

**Author's Note:**

> Totally shouldn't be here but it's PART OF A SERIES OKAY.

Ayesha spends the first fifteen minutes after meeting Alice trying to ascertain just why the girl is on the base.

A year later, she still has absolutely no idea, and she rather suspects that Alice doesn’t know either.

 

~~~~~

 

They fall into routine surprisingly quickly, into new roles with new skills struggling to face a new world.

Ayesha has a Science degree (University of Sydney, majoring in geology and marine biology).  She evaded condescension and contempt and a world of stereotypes, a disinterested school and apathetic teachers.  She is to computers what oil is to water, and beyond defeating everything for the sake of proving everyone but Allah wrong, her only goal in life was to find the man who shot her father after raping and strangling her mother.  (She shot the men who stayed behind and violated her sisters as she hid beneath her bed with their own guns.)

Somehow, her professor and Australian life, remote and distant from the ricochet of bullets outside her front door, managed to distract her long enough to have her placed in a graduate program, performing research in the United Nations research facility at the end of the world.

She is a scientist, a daughter, a vengeful angel of Allah’s will, destroying those who wronged the world.

(But that doesn’t matter anymore.) 

That is when she first encounters Alice; staring in confusion at a mass of screens and pages of texts, because this is her job now.

“Not exactly what we came here for, is it?” she says, more for the sake of saying something than anything else.

A frown mars the short girl’s pale skin.  “Yeah.  Um.  Totally.”  Then she walks off, leaving Ayesha more confused than offended.

The exchange is pushed to the back of her mind (but doesn’t ever vanish) as work begins.

She watches over a world they cannot help, tracks communication signals with clumsy fingers and incomprehension, and does not cry when the machines intercept a billion cries for help.

~~~~~

 

She takes it off the day after the turn of the Judeo-Christian New Year, tries not to meet the curious glances of people who recognised her for it.

“Oh, you aren’t wearing your hijab,” Alice says in greeting when Ayesha walks into the cafeteria, rubbing sleep from eyes that spent the night seeing not-there images of her mother rising, bright-eyed and rotting from a pool of her own blood while her sisters breathed death and disease on her skin as they held her down, waiting for the bite.

She shrugs.  “The _Qur’an_ never mentions the hijab as an article of faith,” is her quietly evasive response. 

As always, Alice seems to understand without Ayesha needing to use words to define her thoughts, her emotions.

 _An article of faith_ – Mecca is overrun with the creatures.  If Allah is real, then this is Lucifer’s spawn destroying the world as He watches.  Silent.

If he isn’t there.

She doesn’t know.

“Ayesha? Hey, _Ayeeeesha_?”

“I’m fine,” she replies automatically, but when she looks up Alice is standing, empty tray in her hands and a careful lack of concern in her eyes. 

“Work, remember?”

Ayesha blinks.  “Oh,” she says lamely, feeling foolish as she looks down at her half-full tray; her bread roll lies untouched, as does the tiny packet of cornflakes.  “Coming,” and as she stands, she brushes hair from her eyes for the first time in fourteen years.

 

~~~~~

 

It isn’t lethargy.  Perhaps apathy, but Ayesha can’t be sure.  She isn’t entirely sure that she hasn’t been apathetic for years and routine has been all that has been keeping her from sleeping past five o’clock,

After months of barely anything touching their radars, a mass text sent from the Netherlands is engaging enough to stop Ayesha in her tracks.  She scans the message quickly, absent-mindedly filing the names _Ara_ and _Raine_ because something about them feels almost familiar.  By the time she’s reached the end, _Lia_ ’s message seems important – or at least novel – enough that she calls out Alice’s name, not looking around to see if the younger girl is coming.

“Read this,” Ayesha says, wheeling her chair sideways slightly to give Alice room to read and watching the movement of her eyes.

Suddenly, Alice tenses up; it wouldn’t have been noticeable, if not for the fact that Alice _never_ does that.  Her only reaction when the news hit about the creatures was “ _oh dear_ ”.

So she reads over the message again.  “Do you know them?” because that can be the only reason she’s getting something like this for reaction.

“Yeah.  Um.  You know what, I’m just gonna.  Um.  Go back to my room.  Yeah,” Alice says, turning around as Ayesha stares at her back, worried.

“Is something wrong?” she asks tentatively when Alice starts trembling.

Alice’s shoulders don’t stop shaking.

“Alice?”

Finally, she turns, face twisted and blotched in a way that is such a far cry from the placid serenity on her friend’s face, Ayesha is forced to do a double-take.

It is the first and hopefully last time Ayesha ever sees Alice crying.

 

~~~~~

 

It’s like the Netherlands text, but worse; something completely unpredictable that catches her gaze and turns everything upside-down.

A phone-call to the Blue Mountains.  That isn’t unusual, particularly now that Alice has told her about a friend of hers in the Mountains, with some singer whose name is familiar to Ayesha but whose face doesn’t come to her mind.

The destination isn’t unusual.

What is unusual is the source.

North-west of Sydney’s CBD.

 _Impossible_ , she thinks, because it is.  Sydney doesn’t _exist_ anymore.

And yet obviously, it does.  Frowning, Ayesha intercepts the call – not to stop it, but to allow herself to eavesdrop (not that there is any such thing as eavesdropping now.)

“ _Fiona?  Sorry, is this Fiona Li_?”

She stiffens at the sound of the voice, which should be clear and yet sounds like articulated static, something she hasn’t heard since the early days of reception in the City Circle tunnels.

 “ _Um…yes?_ ” _Fiona_.  Alice’s friend, then.

Coincidence; because that’s when the door opens behind Ayesha and she can tell it’s Alice from the footsteps (and she probably needs to make more friends, if she has reached the point of identifying her only friend by her _footsteps_.)

 “ _Awesome.  Um.  This is Alice.  Alice with a y.  Um, I don’t know if you remember me, we met at Ara’s 18 th birthday party? Sorry, I just had your number and it was the only one that worked_.”

A hesitation. “ _Alyce!  How are you?  Where are you?_ ”

“Oh, sh-“ Alice breaks off, as she always does and when Ayesha believed in Allah she used to be gratified.  Now, she’s a mixture of amused and annoyed.

“You-“

The sentence goes unfinished.

“ _Sydney_.”

The footsteps that were heading towards Ayesha stop.  She hears her friend turn and whips her head around in time to see the door close softly.

 “ _Wow_ ,” Fiona says.  “ _I’m impressed.  How did you survive?_ ”

 _It can’t be true_.

 “ _Survive_?”

“ _Yeah, the zombies._ ”

“ _Oh_.”

 _Oh_.

Ayesha practically bolts from the room, turning her head left before looking right to see Alice’s retreating back turn the corner.

 

~~~~~

 

The door at the end of the corridor is still closing slowly, and Ayesha bursts through it without checking just which door it is.

She wishes she had.

 “It always seems to be your friends, Ms Cheung,” Dr. Seyers, Director General of the base, is in the middle of remarking to Alice when Ayesha stops in the doorway, wide-eyed.  “The Netherlands, New-”

Finally, the man registers her presence and turns, a slight frown crinkling his brow.

“Miss…”  He frowns again.  “I’m terribly sorry, but I can’t seem to recall your name.”

He’s from England.  An Oxford graduate in Physical Oceanography with ten years of work on the Antarctic research facility.  Her eyes scan the room, and in a daze names jump out at her; Michelle Claverie, a French marine biologist whose research was basically the basis for Ayesha’s honours thesis.

“The-“ she stutters, reminded painfully of the first years of learning English, “th-the creatures-“ Some people seated in the large room shift uncomfortably in their seats and Alice’s face is blank.

“You all know,” Ayesha realises with a painful jolt.  She glances at Alice.  “ _You_ knew.”  Her tone is accusing and she can’t quell the sickening sense of betrayal, though she doesn’t understand why she’s feeling it. 

Out of the corner of her eye, Ayesha sees Dr. Seyers raise his hands placatingly.  “Now, now, um…” He hesitates.

“Ayesha,” she says tersely.  “My name is Ayesha. You interviewed me for the position.”

“Ah, yes,” the Director General replies hastily.  “Marine biology, am I correct?”  He seems to take her silence for confirmation, because he doesn’t wait for a response.  “Look, Ayesha, this is a very…difficult period.  For all of us.  We have to be careful what we tell everyone.”

“But-“

“We’re scientists, my dear,” he interrupts before she can say anything.  “We monitor the information, but we aren’t politicians, and it is impractical that we should inform _interns,_ ” he fairly spits out the word and that is _rude,_ “about every minor development. Yes, it seems the…diseased…retain much of their human-level intelligence.  What do you suggest we do about it?”

Ayesha bites her lip as the doctor looks at her with condescending pity.  He’s right, though it galls her to admit it; though _minor_ development is akin to calling the regime of the Taliban _heavy-handed_.  The only thing she can come up with is _then why is Alice here_? Which sounds childish and immature even in her head.

“…I’m sorry?”

Dr. Seyers blinks, looks surprised; and for a moment Ayesha doesn’t do anything more than stare blankly, till she realises with a sinking heart that she actually asked the question, in front of all these people that she respects.   “Didn’t you know?  Miss Cheung isn’t a scien-“

“Okay, you know what, I’m just going to take Ayesha outside and explain everything to her,” Alice says in a rush – the first time she’s spoken since Ayesha entered the room; and is clearly going to be the last, because she grabs Ayesha by the wrist and practically drags her from the room.

 

~~~~~

 

“South Africa, most of Australia, Southern India and like, pretty much Southern Asia and Europe sort of in general.”

She already knew her parents were dead (long ago, and the pain clouds everything but thirteen years is a long time to learn to adjust and she has, to Mama and Baba and Samara and Hasti and Kinah) but Ayesha can’t help but hurt.

So she goes with something safe.  “Population statistics?”  Alice shakes her head.

“Nope, and we’re not actually like properly in contact with them or anything.  But England’s practically intact and apparently they’ve been doing subtle stuff.”

“Subtle stuff?”

The girl shrugs her shoulders.  “Hey, I have _no_ idea.  Fio’s the first sort of civilian contact there’s been, apparently.”

 “How do you know so much about all of this?” Ayesha finally thinks to ask.  “And what did he mean, you’re not a scientist?”

It’s a peculiar expression that crosses Alice’s face at that; a mix of embarrassment and confusion.  “You didn’t know?”

Ayesha frowns.  “Know what?”

“Oh, I don’t actually know _anything_ about science.  I did, like, a Commerce degree at UNSW.”

“I don’t understand, wh-“

A phone rings, the sound loud and echoing in the relative quiet of the corridor and, after fumbling for a few long, hilarious seconds in her pockets as Ayesha watches, the other girl pulls out her mobile, rolling her name as she looks at the screen.

“Dude,” Alice says flatly, “how are you so fast.”

The question doesn’t seem like one; and it goes unanswered anyway, as a familiar voice – _Ara from the Netherlands_ – shouts over her.

“ _Did you know about this_?” the caller shouts.  “ _Alice, you bitch, how the fuck could you not tell me about this?!_ ”

 _I’ll leave you two alone_ , Ayesha mouths to Alice despite the pleading look and mouthed _don’t leave me_ , because she actually completely understands where Ara is coming from.

Later, she realises that she never got an actual explanation for why Alice is actually here.

 

~~~~~

 

**On a final note (17 th November, 2017)**

Ayesha never really stopped talking to Alice, but she still feels like she’s started _really_ talking to her again (without the haze of distrust and confusion) when she turns a corner to see Jamie, an attractive douchebag of a geology assistant, storming in her direction.  Startled, she lets him brush past her with an unapologetic “excuse me.”

She looks ahead to see Alice leaning against the wall, looking pitying but amused.

Looking from Alice to the space Jamie just occupied, it clicks in her head and she rolls her eyes.  “Isn’t that like” and she never used to say that word in that way, _like_ “the fifteenth horrible-but-pretty boy you’ve rejected?” she asks, stepping slowly towards the other girl.

Alice scoffs, then frowns, raising her fingers in front of her face and muttering names under her breath.

“Thirteenth,” she says finally.

It’s not that Alice isn’t attractive in a childlike, tiny way, but they have tall Swedish girls with long legs and miniskirts (the facility is heated but she doesn’t understand _why_ ) and it isn’t as though those girls are _stupid_ , either.

Ayesha rolls her eyes, leaning against the wall on Alice’s right.

“So.”

“So?”

“Talked to any zombies lately?”

It’s a peace offering, even though they haven’t been fighting.

“Oh totally.  Because when British diplomats are lacking, everyone comes to me.  And since when did you call them zombies?”

Ayesha shrugs.  “Don’t know.”

Since she realised that this isn’t Shai’tan on Earth.  It is humanity on Earth, struggling through a vicious cycle of nature that gives and takes in the same breath. 

All she can do is accept, and live, and fight.

“Alice,” she says suddenly, as she remembers, “you never told me what you’re actually doing here.”

She hears Alice shift slightly beside her, and turns her head to meet her eyes.  “What, do you mean _what is the purpose of life_ , or _are you like God reborn_ , or what?”

A giggle – her own, and Ayesha hasn’t _giggled_ in a while, not really, but it feels good.  “No, I mean, with a Commerce degree?  How did you end up in Antarctica?”

Alice blushes.  “Okay, so this is actually really awkward and how have I not told you this before, but, um okay, so when I started uni my parents said I could go anywhere I wanted for a couple of months if I averaged HDs and so, you know, I totally hacked into the system and faked it but not really because I actually like suck with technology and I am rambling what is this.  Um.  Yes.  So here I am.”

She laughs.

She can’t help it.  She laughs and laughs till her stomach hurts and she starts tearing up and Alice looks down at her, curled in over her stomach, concerned and confused but there must be something contagious about laughing because Alice cracks as well and they stay there, backs against the wall till they’re hugging, hysterical but not.

(Alex, the third guy Alice rejected, walks by a few minutes later and mutters something about _fucking hell, should have known she was a fucking lesbian_ , and that only sets Ayesha off more.)

“Oh, by the way,” Alice says at some point, “happy birthday,” and there is an apocalypse going on, half the human race is either dead or mutated, and she hasn’t felt the warmth of the sun in over a year, but…

“Thanks,” she replies, “it is,” (it is happy) and she means it.


End file.
